07 Jun Swords and Ploughshares
In 1980, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson published the first edition of Metaphors We Live By, which contends that cultural metaphors undergird the way we see the world.
Think about this one: “time is money.” We talk about “spending” time, “wasting” time, and “saving” time – all of which suggest a way of understanding time as a commodity. It’s so subtle, but it shapes how we see the world. Lakoff and Johnson make the same case around argumentation – that in the U.S., our dominant metaphor is “argument is war.”
Earlier in my career, I was definitely a victim of this metaphor (as were my students). I taught classes to “defend” their position and “attack” the views of their “opponents” with counterarguments. I’m certain I failed to speak up when a member of the debate team talked about “destroying” the competition or “demolishing” their arguments.
But with a little more time in the world – especially one in which political and social media discourse has grown so hostile – I’d like to consider a different path.
What if, instead of counseling writers to “attack” others’ points, we framed counterarguments this way:
- A persuasive piece doesn’t just state your opinion, but it respects those who disagree with you by making a good faith effort to understand their point of view.
- When you discuss their ideas, point out places of agreement as well as the places you have drawn different conclusions, along with your reasoning.
I suppose this might not translate to huge changes in the way the essay reads, but I’d like to think it could lead to more thoughtful positions. Better still, reframing argumentation this way could have lasting implications for how students see debate in the world. As Roger Fisher and William Ury remind us in their classic Getting to Yes, we do far better making cases from shared values, not stubborn positions. (See also Jennifer Fletcher’s thoughtful post on how assumptions about values can undermine good argumentation – she calls it a “failure to listen.”)
For our students, this has implications beyond the classroom – most directly as our social media culture grapples with how we should best disagree with each other online. Smith College Professor Loretta Ross, currently writing a book on the topic, argues: “You can disagree with people in a pluralistic society, without calling them names, without assuming that they don’t have the human kindness within them and that you shouldn’t care about them simply because you’re on the other side of the political divide…. My integrity demands it.”
The bottom line? Lakoff and Johnson ask us to consider how the culture would shift with a different metaphor for argument – something like “argument is dance.” I don’t know what I’d call this mindset shift yet, but I think there are lasting implications for how students see the role of public discourse in a participatory democracy.
If you’re interested in this framing, one thing we might do is recast the ideas of concession and refutation using new terms – perhaps ones like anticipation and consideration. Let me know, however, if you have other ways of framing persuasive writing. Even if we disagree, I’ll make sure to make sure I’ve done my best to see your point of view.